Demo Guide

Who Is This For?

This guide is meant for all customer/prospect facing consultants who wish to demo key features of ERPNext. Primarily this is for the sales, pre-sales, and success team members.

Demo Qualification

Never give a demo without having information about the prospect and their use cases in place.

For pre-sales, make sure that the discovery call(s) is/are conducted in depth. Make sure that the pain points are evident.

Construct a solution around the pain points/key problems.

Eg: There is a manufacturing company which is using an accounting software for accounting (duh) and then spreadsheets for inventory management. Their key issue is data duplication.

In this case, the demo should be focused on showing how the software, ERPNext, can help in reducing duplication and provide a unified experience.

Before signing on for a demo, check if the following were covered in the discovery call or not? If not, another call can be scheduled or the topics can be covered during the demo itself:

1. Company and its background: What does the company do? What materials/services do they deal in? It would be unwise to jump on a demo call and ask broad questions which would be covered in a qualification/discovery process.
2. Pain Points: Why are they switching/upgrading their software? What have they tried earlier? Have they looked at any alternatives? This will help you understand how to set the expectations going forward.
3. Use Cases to Demo: What do they want to see specifically? It could be a simple flow such as Accounts Payables/Receivables or an entire module or two? Likewise, who all from the prospect's end are attending? This will allow you to tailor the demo to the audience.
4. Any written material?: Be sure to collect any documentation or diagrams the prospects may have shared or plan to share. Propsects do sometimes put down details so it is easier to pass it around to differnt software vendors. These generally have the use cases or exact flows noted down.
5. What are they doing currently and how they wish to proceed?: Be sure to note what does a current process or workflow looks like. What basic level of approvals are taken up. What does their sales/purchase process look like, etc. Study this and see where you can optimize or improve in ERPNext. Also check if the prospects have suggested or shared what their ideal flow would be and try to map it as closely as possible.

What do you do if the prospect is interested only in a plain demo? Better not to go ahead. These type of deals don't materialize or are too early in the process and thus window shopping. For standard demos you can point them to available videos on YouTube or Frappe School.

Demo Preparation

1. Create a separate/new demo instance: Create a newly isolated demo instance for the prospect. Whenever possible, abstain from using an existing one especially if the organizations are not similar.
2. Populate with Demo Data: Try to populate this demo setup with data that closely mirrors the prospects. You can pick up info from publicly available sources such as LinkedIn. Also personalize the instance by updating the logo, letterheads, etc. This will make it easier for the tprospects to visualize it as their own setup. Also make sure to have some masters ready such as customers, suppliers, etc so that they can be reused to make this process easier.
3. Map specific use cases: Be sure to map the important use cases highlighted during the discovery process. Run a few flows to make sure the setup is working fine.
4. Tell yourself a story: Document the pain points and try to create a flow which could incorporate most pain points. It is easier to tranistion between two pain points if you are prepared. It will also help you identify the gaps in the discovery and have more questions to get answered before/after the demo.

Delivering the Demo

Sharing some best practices here. Ultimately you have to form your own style of delivering the demo, hence here I'm sharing some practices I've developed based on experience:

1. Ease everyone in: Read the room. Be sure that all key stakeholders are present. Ease the prospect into the software. Give an overview of the agenda and how you will be proceeding. Generally start with the UI and basic navigation in ERPNext.
2. Show basic setup: Spend a little time on the basic setup. If your agenda covers procurement, show basic setup of items and customers along with Data Import for quick entry.
3. Transaction and outcome: Demo the key flows. During the process, do not spend too much time on the setup that may be required. Focus more on the outcome. For example, a leave application setup may involve 10 different doctypes. If you go in through the nitty-gritty, you will spend far too much time here. Instead, focus more on the outcome which is how to apply the leave as an employee and approve it as an HR.
4. Don't Rush: In the given one odd hour, do not try to cram everything in. It is important that the prospect goes back with clarity about how you can help them. The intention is not to show every feature avaiable and rush the process. Make sure prospects are following your actions throughout the demo.
   
5. Use Standard Industry Terms: Prospects don't know our software much. Hence they may not know ERPNext specific terms as well. Stick to industry standard language as much as possible. Eg: Using GRN for Purchase Receipt. Here's a guide to help you out on ERP terms and SAP terminology.
6. Adapt, Improvise, Overcome: Not all demos go as planned. Sometimes, the meeting can turn too much into a question-answer round. You must adapt to the situation and improvise as needed. The gaol of the meeting is to make sure that the prospect have a clear idea of how your software can ultimately help them!
   
7. Takeing Feedback: Always take feedback early during the demo. It is recommended to take feedback in the first 10-15 minutes. It will help you assess the audience on attentiveness and interest in the product. This is critical in online/remote settings as you are unable keep an eye on everyone. Do this consistently to make sure that what you're showing is translating well to the prospects. Take overall feedback at the end.
8. Keep it interactive: Keep asking questions on processes and pain points during the demo. Before switching context between two different pain points, mention what you are going to show next and what are their expectation on the same. This will make the audience more confident that the presenter wants to use the time to understand and solve their pain points.
9. Finish the demo before time: Always keep a margin of 5-10 minutes for Q&A or to discuss next steps.